Reasons you should start a business are always unique. You might like the freedom, or just want to try out your wings as an entrepreneur. These things came first to my mind when I was thinking about the benefits of owning your own business.
1. You are not accountable for anyone but yourself.
I put this first because it is the most important thing for me. Being your own boss, nobody can tell you what to do. Feeling like taking a day off? Sure. That’s just a cut for your own paycheck, but you don’t have to explain to anybody why you didn’t show up to work today. Well, in some cases at least.
On the other hand, if you feel like working for an entire week non-stop, there will be nobody holding you back. Things you don’t like, you can just outsource if it seems reasonable. Nobody will be forcing you to do anything.
2. You get to do what you like or love to do
Doing something you really like and enjoy is very important. Think about how big a part of your lifetime you will spend working. Doing something you hated for 40 years in a row? Doesn’t sound so fascinating, does it?
Let’s say you really enjoy repairing cars, for example. You do the calculations and decide to put your own garage up. You get to do every day what you enjoy the most.
And if one day after a while you feel like doing something else, it is not always so difficult to sell a profitable, well-run business. Some businesses might even run at their own pace. After setting it up and running, you can hire a CEO to replace yourself and just enjoy being the owner.
3. Creating business, the opportunities are limitless
When thinking about starting a business, “only the sky’s the limit”. Well, today, that’s not the case for everybody. You might as well just start a new rocket company that plans trips to the Sun.
Whatever comes to mind, sometimes the ideas that sound most stupid, might be the next big thing. Who would have imagined you could read posts on the internet with your smartphone at 3am 100 years ago?
4. Being a business owner, you will get the profits
When you own the business, you will be holding the risk if things go sideways. On the other hand, if your business is profitable, that’s all yours as well. When ever starting a business, you should consider the risk/reward ratio in that as well. I am a big fan of calculating different risks myself.
Let’s say you must put ten thousand on the line when starting a new business. But on the other hand, you can make that ten thousand back in a year, and all the years to come. If there was a 50% chance of succeeding, I would take that without hesitation.
Of course, you can’t just calculate the chance of succeeding, but with some research, and common sense, you can get a pretty good knowledge about your chances. If that business would generate that ten thousand back for the next 10 years, you would have risked ten thousand to get hundred back. Not bad odds if you ask me.
That same calculation can be done with time as well. Let’s turn that ten thousand into time. Let’s say it would take you six months to gather ten thousand dollars. You would be risking half a year of work, to get 5 years in return. This sounds even more tempting to me, because time is our most valuable asset and I think it should not be traded for money.
5. You don’t have to work on the clock
If you found a way to do the work in less time, perfect. If you still work at the same time as everybody else, you will accomplish a lot more at the same time. When working for yourself, the productivity of the work is often much higher, than working based on an hourly salary.
If you know, you will be paid a solid 10 dollars per hour, would you try to do your tasks faster? Can’t speak for you, but I wouldn’t, unless it was really important. I have a post about why the hourly wage is making you inefficient. You can read it here.
Not the best thing for everybody
When owning your own business and working just for yourself, there comes the risk, and with risk, there comes stress too. If you don’t like to take risks, there is nothing wrong with working for someone else.
People are different, one thing might work better for you than it works for somebody else. Hopefully this was helpful for you, have a nice day.
Other business-related posts can be found here.